FIG. 1 shows a schematic diagram of a typical fire alarm system. As FIG. 1 shows, in a fire alarm system, various fire detectors, acoustic/optical alarms or manual alarms distributed throughout a building are collectively referred to as peripheral devices 10. These peripheral devices 10 are connected to a fire alarm controller (control panel) 20 via a wired or wireless network. The fire alarm controller 20, also abbreviated as controller 20, receives an input from these peripheral devices 10, for example an alert signal, and monitors the operating state of these peripheral devices 10. When an alert signal is received and it is confirmed that an emergency has occurred, the controller 20 drives an acoustic/optical alarm 10 for example to issue an alert, to prompt personnel in the building to pay attention and promptly evacuate, or even drives a linked device to act to extinguish the fire.
The controller in a fire alarm system must generally be configured before use. The content of configuration includes the addresses, types, objects of monitoring, and linkage control logic, etc. of the various devices connected to the controller. In an existing fire alarm system, the controller generally has a communication interface 22, which can be connected to a terminal device (e.g. a PC or a mobile terminal such as a mobile phone) 30. An operator can use the terminal device 30 to complete various configurations of the controller 20. The communication interface 22 can be any suitable interface type, e.g. a serial port, a wired or wireless network interface, a high-speed parallel interface, etc. As FIG. 1 shows, the terminal device 30 at least comprises a display component 32 and an input component 34. The display component 32 may be a display screen or a projector. The input component 34 may be a mouse, a keyboard, a gesture input capture device, etc.
During configuration, the configuration of linkage control logic is an important part of configuration work. The operator must perform linkage logic configuration on devices which have a causal association therebetween according to the way in which wires are connected on site and the installation situation. Existing ways of performing linkage logic configuration can broadly be divided into two major types: one is configuration based on logic formula, the other is configuration based on tree logic.
In one example, suppose that an area (e.g. a story of a building) has two sections (e.g. different sub-regions), which are marked 1 and 2 respectively. Each section comprises two zones, so each zone (e.g. room) can be marked 1.1 and 1.2, and 2.1 and 2.2. Furthermore, suppose that the linkage control consists of the following: if an alert occurs in 1.1. or 2.1, then an acoustic/optical alert 3.1 in the corresponding region for indicating evacuation is activated. At this time, if a logic formula is used to express the linkage control, it will be 1.1+2.1=3.1, wherein the plus sign indicates an “OR” relationship; 1.1 and 2.1 may represent each hardware device address. The occurrence of an alarm in 1.1 or 1.2 is the cause, and the activation of the acoustic/optical alarm 3.1 is the corresponding linkage result. Expression by such a logic formula is simple, but the meaning of each symbol must be learned in advance and a compiler is needed to check whether an error has been made in the logic formula.
FIG. 2 shows a situation where a tree structure is used to express the linkage control. FIG. 2 shows two tree structures which are associated with each other. In FIG. 2, the left-hand tree is a detection tree; a device in each zone of the detection tree can detect an alert (as a cause), and may also be a device which needs to activate an action (as an effect). The right-hand tree is a control tree, which represents a logical causal control relationship. The control tree may comprise multiple different causal control logics. A fire control (CONTROL FIRE) is shown by way of example in FIG. 2. The fire control specifically includes a cause operator (COURSE OPERATOR) and an effect action (EFFECT ACTION). Below the cause operator, one or more causes may also be further included; these are represented by CAUSE STATUS TRACER1 and CAUSE STATUS TRACER2 in FIG. 2. When configuration is performed, it is necessary to allocate mutual association relationships to nodes on the two different trees. In other words, it is necessary to configure which zone of the detection tree experiences an alert in its hardware as a cause, and which hardware device acts as a result of that cause. In the example shown in FIG. 2, a user configures ZONE1 and ZONE2 in the detection tree to be causes in the control tree (CAUSE STATUS TRACER1 and CAUSE STATUS TRACER2). Furthermore, it is also necessary to configure an effect of a corresponding action in the control tree, e.g. the effect action in FIG. 2 is the activation of an acoustic/optical alert for example in an AREA. Such a manner of configuration is very clear at the logic level, but the configuration process is relatively complex.
As such, there is still a need in the prior art for a novel way to configure linkage logic.